If I'm being honest, S/M, despite being good games felt really unfinished, especially on the whole postgame aspect.
US/UM feels more like what S/M should have been to begin with. And so far I'm myself really not impressed with the updates they've been showing on it. I hope it's just so we still get surprises when we get to play it.
(Also dear god all of those new Z moves animations are going to slow down battles even more somehow.)

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Bronydude2k5

If you make me a Sash Lilac wad, I'll make you a sonic sprite hack of any choice.

After experiencing the 6th Gen and S/M, I feel like the improvements won't be enough. At this point, the Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves have made the game so broken in terms of balance I couldn't care less for the newer games. And with Nintendo playing around with micro-transactions and cartridge-locked content even more, I'm not going to take the risk.

Also, shinylocks are infuriating and unexcusable. I would rather hunt for months for a shiny legendary than have them held ransom, thank you very much.

Uh, I think you're thinking of a very different franchise there. Remember, this is the franchise that didn't let you mega evolve the new mega evolutions when playing ORAS against XY because there wasn't an update patch. They aren't charging money for your Mew or whatever. Promotional content doesn't mean pay to play.

Also, shiny lock is there to prevent you from doing something completely unfun. Don't even try to tell me that soft resetting for a 1 in 8192 chance is enjoyable. Soft resetting for a good nature and IVs is way more than bad enough X_X

Also, shiny lock is there to prevent you from doing something completely unfun. Don't even try to tell me that soft resetting for a 1 in 8192 chance is enjoyable. Soft resetting for a good nature and IVs is way more than bad enough X_X

In 6G and beyond the odds are 1/4096 and you can boost them to 1/1366 by completing the dex which is ridiculously easy in S/M. I personally find shiny locks unberable as someone that likes to find shinies, because then they just give away the shinies like some worthless trash through events, every goddamn person that didn't live in a cave and had a Wi-Fi connection has a Shiny Tapu Koko on their S/M game thanks to that.
Besides nothing is forcing people to soft reset for them, this has never been a problem in past generations, and you were even able to get shiny legendaries aside of the story ones in Omega Ruby and Alpha Saphirre.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Bronydude2k5

If you make me a Sash Lilac wad, I'll make you a sonic sprite hack of any choice.

Forgive me for not keeping up, but I can't get videos to load on my connection. Can someone explain the videos in words? (Also, does US and UM have the same story as S and M, or is it completely different?)

The restrictions for PvP aren't going to matter when the main story gets affected by them. Especially as a player who likes to have a fair match, I want to earn my OHKOs and wins. I refrained from using Z-Moves for my playthrough of S/M and suffered from it many times.

Mega Evolutions ended up being mere fanservice and often failed to give the pokemon who were underpowered and forgotten the power they needed. For example, did we seriously need two megas for Charizard and Mewtwo? Also, Mega Rayquaza is so infamously overpowered even Smogon needed to ban him from the list of banned pokemon itself. I'm not fine with this.

Mega Evolutions make me remember how much better Gen 2 & 4 did things when it came to bringing back many pokemon. Evolutions like Togekiss, Roserade, Mismagius, CROBAT and Blissey gave the underpowered pokemon something we call a chance. No temporary transformation or restrictions, just a new & more badass evolution you can work towards. And while Gen 4 wasn't all that enjoyable to me, I can praise it for the many improvements it brought to the series.

And yes, people do still hunt shiny legendaries. And they enjoy it. Just like how I have played Borderlands-series and Terraria for thousands of hours in search for all the ultra rare stuff and spent half of my playtime in S/M hunting for shinies and breeding for max IVs. The feeling of being rewarded tenfold for our effort and patience is where it's at.

Besides nothing is forcing people to soft reset for them, this has never been a problem in past generations, and you were even able to get shiny legendaries aside of the story ones in Omega Ruby and Alpha Saphirre.

As someone who's done some game design myself, I really understand both sides of the shiny thing. Shiny lock is there to protect players from themselves. I don't think anyone here thinks that resetting their game thousands of times to get a shiny legendary is a fun gameplay experience. Players will optimize for what they think is important, not "fun", so it's the game designer's job to try to get players to play the game in an enjoyable manner.

I think your real objection is that the replacement method for getting the shiny legendary is such a high distribution that it's not as rare as the implication should be. That's a completely fair assessment and they probably should be distributing shiny legendaries in a manner that isn't guaranteed so there's actually some rarity involved. For instance, they could distribute a legendary via code card but only a percentage of the codes are shiny or something like that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoshirocks90

Forgive me for not keeping up, but I can't get videos to load on my connection. Can someone explain the videos in words? (Also, does US and UM have the same story as S and M, or is it completely different?)

It's a direct sequel, like B2/W2.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Sin Heartless

Mega Evolutions make me remember how much better Gen 2 & 4 did things when it came to bringing back many pokemon. Evolutions like Togekiss, Roserade, Mismagius, CROBAT and Blissey gave the underpowered pokemon something we call a chance. No temporary transformation or restrictions, just a new & more badass evolution you can work towards. And while Gen 4 wasn't all that enjoyable to me, I can praise it for the many improvements it brought to the series.

Now this is DO strongly agree with. I absolutely loved gen 4's giant pile of evolutions for previously underloved Pokemon. Mega evolution was a neat idea but I really don't like the way it was implemented, requiring a specific item per Pokemon just for promotional silliness. At least the Z-moves are mostly type-based instead of specific Pokemon-based so it's not a promotional hunt or trade for the item you need.

I think what you're complaining about in game balance is unavoidable, though. As long as we're allowed to keep importing our Pokemon from last generation, power creep is inevitable as new moves are introduced. If you want a shock, go check out gen 1 or 3's moveset lists for Pokemon. They're incredibly tiny and the relatively low power level of gen 3 competitive play is because of that. There's no way to reign in the power creep without actually doing a full reset, and nobody wants to stop being able to use their treasured mon they've been using for a decade.

My two cents on Shiny Pokémon is that a lot of the time, the Shiny palette is inferior to the usual color scheme of a Pokémon and is unconforming to its design or theme... ergo, I’m less ecstatic than another given person who uses one or some or all for their team. For me, stuff like Shiny Seismitoad and Phantump and Trevenant are exceptions.

I can say that I share the feeling of suddenly encountering one in the wild... but not for stuff traded online as you can expect since some of these Shinies I find when Wonder Trade-ing are hack-works, so... maybe they sorta lost their spectacle (Lv. 100 Shiny... Latias...). “Well it’s called ‘Wonder’ Trade so etc.” you’re right I think

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoshirocks90

Forgive me for not keeping up, but I can't get videos to load on my connection. Can someone explain the videos in words? (Also, does US and UM have the same story as S and M, or is it completely different?)

Really? I would have sworn I heard somewhere it was doing the B2/W2 thing. That's kinda unfortunate, as while there were definite problems in B2/W2, I really liked having some actual progression in time.

I say this because I see that Lillie starts out these games in her Nihilego-lookalike look *again* as footage from the most recent trailer shows, and seems to be inferred that she goes through the same Z-Powered Lillie development *again*, the twist I guess with these games being that she's more than tolerant of Pokémon battling. If these were sequels to Sun & Moon, there'd be no reason to ever relive that moment of confidence boost, if we've ever learned anything about her mother's past transgressions with her. I would _love_ if, had these continued the story, that the thing with Lusamine going into rehab from all of... that, was resolved, and the thing with Mohn was "figured out" somehow and reunited the family. I just know that he's gonna have a role in the plot in USUM this time, but I have doubts that it's anything crucial.

Progression in time would've helped, for instance, to build up that one guy's plans to make a Fossil Pokémon Jurassic Park a reality by actually being able to visit it in these games, if these were sequels. Not that it couldn't become a new location introduced in USUM, but by being an alternative-retelling-whatever, it makes a little less sense.

If there's anything that bothers me about US/UM from what I've seen so far...

Spoiler:

...it's that the Ultra dimension apparently has humans now? That and there are other more familar environments in it now, going by the released screenshots so far. Both of these changes kind of ruined the other-worldlyness of the dimension that I got from the original games IMO.

Then of course, this is nothing to do with gameplay or even much to do with the story unlike the discussion above, so don't mind me if you don't care. =P

Mind you, I haven't really played any Pokemon games since Pokemon Black now, though I have read up a little on what they changed I guess.